Interacting with sounds of Porto

2009 Summer School in Sound and Music Computing & SID Training School on Interactions with Environmental Sounds

Casa Da Música , Porto, Portugal, July 18-21, 2009

The 2009 Sound and Music Computing Summer School will be organized as a Training School of the SID COST Action. The theme of this summer school is Interacting with Sounds of Porto. This summer school will explore the potential of recording, processing, sharing and interacting with city sounds.

This is the fifth SMC Summer School (after the Genova and Barcelona editions funded by the European Coordination Action IST-FET S2S² and later editions in Stockholm and Genova again) and the second Training School of the COST Action on Sonic Interaction Design. It will take place just before the 6th Sound and Music Computing Conference.

This Summer School aims at giving an opportunity to young researchers interested in the field of Sound and Music Computing to showcase their ideas, learn new skills and work with senior researchers. The School will cater to suits of different student backgrounds. If your background is an Art, Sound/Music recording, Design, Computer Science, etc., there will be something new for you to learn at this Summer School.

There will be a selection of participants and we welcome applications of students from different backgrounds and will foster scientific and artistic cross-fertilization.

Academic program

During 4 days, the program will include lectures, as well as hands-on practical sessions under the supervision of tutors who will provide one-to-one mentoring on artistic and/or scientific projects focused on interactions with sounds that reflect the city of Porto and its activities.

Speed talks and poster sessions will also be organized for students to give an overview and receive feedback on their current research, and to foster scientific cross-fertilization.

The summer school will include 3 main lectures:

1. Design of new interfaces for musical expression. This lecture will review existing examples of novel interfaces for musical expression (also known as gestural controllers or control surfaces), as well as the various sensing technologies used in these devices. We will also discuss ways to design mapping strategies between interface output variables and sound synthesis input variables and approaches to the design of novel interfaces and digital musical instruments. Course material.
2. Registering the soundscape. This lecture will present basic aesthetic, technical, and cultural aspects of audio field recording, interactive approaches to sound design with environmental sounds, and the nature of the roles that soundscape composition can play in our lives.
3. Sound edition, description and retrieval, social networks. Present current technologies for sound edition, description and retrieval, and introduce students to the use of the Freesound.org platform with which they will edit, tag and share their sound recordings. (Freesound.org).

Preliminary schedule

Course material

Lecture 1:

E. R. Miranda and M. M. Wanderley. 2006. New Digital Musical Instruments: Control and Interaction Beyond the Keyboard. Middleton, WI: A-R Editions Inc. ISBN: 0-89579-585-X

Team

Coordination

• Emilia Gómez (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona)
• Fabien Gouyon (INESC Porto, local coordinator)

Teachers

• Marcelo Wanderley, Input Devices and Music Interaction Laboratory -
  CIRMMT - Schulich School of Music, McGill University (lecture 1).
  
  Marcelo M. Wanderley has published several book chapters and papers in various areas related to new interfaces for musical expression and was the Chair of the 2003 International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME03). In 2006, he co-authored (with Eduardo R. Miranda) the textbook “New Digital Musical Instruments: Control and Interaction Beyond the Keyboard”, A-R Editions, the first comprehensive reference on this area. He is currently Associate Professor in Music Technology at the Schulich School of Music, McGill University, Montreal, Québec, Canada.
  
• Joel Chabade, President, Electronic Music Foundation (lecture 2)
  
  Composer, author Joel Chadabe is a pioneer in the development of interactive music systems. His music has been performed in New York, Paris, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Venice, Rome, Amsterdam, Berlin, Linz, Stockholm, San Francisco, London, and other cities worldwide; and recorded on EMF Media, Deep Listening, and other labels. He is the author of 'Electric Sound', a history of electronic music. His articles have been published in leading journals. As president of Intelligent Music, he oversaw the first publications of interactive music software. He has received grants from NEA, New York State Council on the Arts, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Fulbright Commission, and other organizations, and he is the recipient of the SEAMUS 2007 Lifetime Achievement Award.
  
  Mr. Chadabe is currently Professor Emeritus at State University of New York, faculty at Manhattan School of Music, visiting faculty at NYU; and president of Electronic Music Foundation.
  
• Xavier Serra, Music Technology Group, Universitat Pompeu Fabra (lecture 3)
  
  Xavier Serra (Barcelona, 1959) is the head of the Music Technology Group of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. After a multidisciplinary academic education he obtained a PhD in Computer Music from Stanford University in 1989 with a dissertation on the spectral processing of musical sounds that is considered a key reference in the field. His research interests cover the understanding, modeling and generation of musical signals by computational means, with a balance between basic and applied research and approaches from both scientific/technological and humanistic/artistic disciplines. Dr. Serra is very active in promoting initiatives in the field of Sound and Music Computing at the local and international levels, being editor and reviewer of a number of journals, conferences and research programs of the European Commission, and also giving lectures on current and future challenges of the field. He is the principal investigator of more than 15 major research projects funded by public and private institutions, the author of 31 patents and of more than 50 research publications.
  

Jury/Scientific Committee/Tutors

• To be announced

Application

A maximum of 20 students will be admitted to the school.

Interested candidates are asked to propose a project they intend to carry out (either alone or in small groups) during the summer school and present it at the end. Project proposals must be related to the general theme of interacting with sounds of the city of Porto. A selection of projects will be made by the Scientific Committee. Participants may be asked to modify slightly their projects. After completion of all projects, the Scientific Committee will proceed to an evaluation and the best project will receive a prize during the Sound and Music Computing Conference (23-25 July 2009) in the Casa da Música.

Applications should include the following documents in pdf format:

• Curriculum vitae (max. 1 page)
• Certified copy of academic degree
• Short description of the student research interest and motivation to participate, including a specific project proposal for the summer school (main theme: Interacting with sounds of Porto) (max. 5 pages)

Admitted students are requested to bring a poster at the summer school summarizing their research project.

For additional information, please use this form.

Students have to send their applications before April 24th 2009. For sending your application, please use this form.

Notification of acceptance will be given no later than May 12th.

There will be a registration fee to the Summer School (to be determined). The COST Action IC0601 on Sonic Interaction Design will provide financial help to a selection of students under the form of individual fixed grants of 500 Euros (preference will be given to students whose proposal projects best fit SID topics -see here).

Summer School students are also encouraged to attend the Sound and Music Computing Conference (23-25th July 2009). There will be special (lower) conference fees for Summer School students.

Related links

• Sons de Barcelona
• Urban Tapestries
• Ear to the Earth
• Davos Soundscape
• GPS Drawing
• BioMapping
• Sonic Panoramas
• Hearing Helsinki
• Improve software
• Stadt Musik

Travelling and accomodation

Participants will have to arrange their own travel and accommodation.
For more info on special rates hotels, traveling tips and local information, please see here.